


Tell Those Questions I Have No Answers

by cashewdani



Category: Gossip Girl, Skins (UK)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Marijuana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-24
Updated: 2009-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he wakes up, there's a girl in a white sundress sitting next to him, braiding dandelions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Those Questions I Have No Answers

Nate cuts British Literature because he still hasn't gotten around to finishing _Things Fall Apart_ and the title seems way too literal with how everything went at the wedding over the weekend. It's really even more unfortunate because he was supposed to have submitted the essay back in March and there's only like three days left of school. 

Whatever, it's not his fault this entire year has completely sucked. 

He goes to his spot in Central Park, lying down in the grass and loosening his tie. Watching the clouds, he worries about his parents, and Vanessa and maybe even a little bit about the stupid Achebe assignment until he's sure now he's probably skipping Chemistry as well. 

It's just really warm out and almost summer break and the sky is a type of blue he thought you could only find in a box of crayons. One of those crazy colors like cornflower or aquamarine. 

He wants to take off his jacket, but it would require moving, so he just stays still, letting the sun bake down on him. There's a German family having a picnic nearby, and a dog is barking while Nate closes his eyes. If the sky is cornflower, how on earth are you supposed to be inside writing a paper on a book that's apparently really into yams?

\---

When he wakes up, there's a girl in a white sundress sitting next to him, braiding dandelions. 

"Wow, you're up! How lovely." 

"Do I know you?" 

She gives him this large smile and continues knotting the stems together. "I'm Cassie." 

"Nate," he says, propping himself up on his elbows. 

Cassie looks innocent and damaged at the same time and like she's way more interesting than any other girl he's ever spoken to. Including Serena. 

"Nate, would you like some spliff?" Cassie pulls this perfect little joint from her blond hair, although he's sure she must have had it resting behind an ear he just can't see. "I'm planning on eating tonight," and her smile gets even bigger while she slips on this pair of plastic sunglasses. 

He has no idea what she's talking about, and knows he shouldn't take drugs from some lunatic in Central Park, but it's not like he has anything else to do today. 

She's got amazing weed and says she doesn't want to talk about anything, she just wants to try to hear the grass grow. Nate might already be a little in love with her.

\---

It turns out she's staying in Brooklyn, like this is some weird thing where he's going to be slumming across the bridge whenever the opportunity presents itself. When he asks her how she got there, she shrugs, and says, "A plane". 

They end up walking around and getting on the 1, he has no idea why, and going all the way to South Ferry. 

The water is so bright he doesn't even want to look at it, but Cassie leans over the railing staring right at it, grinning like mad. She opens her arms up wide, as if she's trying to hold onto it, or take it in, or become part of it. Her hair and her dress move with the breeze and she's gorgeous, she really is. 

She wants him to get his picture taken with one of those people dressed up like the Statue of Liberty, and is weirdly insistent about it. "Nate, it would be wonderful. Please?" But they're freaking him out and it's not like he's the one who's the tourist. 

"Come on, I'm starving," he says instead, taking her hand and pulling her towards the visitor's center. He spends practically $9 on two ice cream cones which even he thinks is pretty ridiculous. The butter pecan looks incredible though, so who really cares? 

He watches Cassie stick out the tiny pink tip of her tongue and taste her vanilla cone. Her next lick knocks the scoop onto the bricks. 

"I could buy you another. Or we could share?" Nate tells her, but she says it's fine, and feeds the sugar wafer to some of the ugliest pigeons he's ever seen.

\---

They go back to the subway and while waiting on the platform, Cassie starts dancing to whatever song two guys are playing on a trumpet and a clarinet. The musicians seem pleased because she draws over at least four people who throw in some change. Not including Nate who drops in a $50 he was planning on using to get some weed later on. 

He's just feeling really good. For like the first time in forever. She smiles with her bright red lips, arms and hips moving in perfect rhythm with the music.

A train pulls up and Cassie wants to know if he wants to go on an adventure.

\---

Apparently an adventure means switching lines indiscriminately, going uptown and downtown and across town until the only thing he's sure of is that he's still in New York and that Cassie's the most unique person he's ever met. Which is even more impressive when everyone he already knows is so concerned with being like someone else. 

She's been smiling literally the entire day, but not always like she's happy. Sometimes it's like she just really needs him to think that she is. "We're having fun, aren't we, Nate?" 

He picks up some strands of her hair and twirls them around his fingers. "Yeah, Cass, we are." 

"Please don't call me Cass," and while she says it he can see the smile slip a little. Suddenly it's back though because she exclaims, "There's another car across the way!" and they're running through the already dinging doors, her hand mysteriously cool on his wrist.

\---

They spend the entire afternoon underground, and by the time they come up for air, it's dark out. The streetlights are on and it smells like summer already and everything is _so_ mellow. It makes him think that maybe his life is just going to turn around starting with today.

In front of the Museum of Natural History, she gets completely transfixed by a banner of some dinosaur skeleton. "Don't you think it's amazing that they've been dead for millions of years, but we're still remembering them? I'd love to see all the bones." 

"We'll go," he says and means it. 

She throws her arms around his neck and hugs him. "Today has been lovely. And the sky's such a fantastic shade of indigo," and Nate can't help himself any more. Cassie is special and perfect and some miraculous sign of something. He's kissing her, and she feels so delicate and before he can process more than that, she's pulling back. 

Her rejection may be the worst disappointment yet, and he doesn't know if that's because it's just the most recent or because it actually is. 

"Nate, I'm sorry. I'm waiting for Sid." 

"Who's Sid?" he asks, fingers loosening from her shoulders and hope drifting off with the breeze.

"Oh, he's everything."

Of course he is.

\---

It turns out that Sid's her boyfriend, or her ex-boyfriend, or maybe just some guy she never even dated but would have liked to. She talks about him while she's cutting this piece of chicken, and just cutting and cutting, her mouth moving as fast as the knife. "Sid slept with Michelle because Tony got hit by a bus, and he wasn't the same after that happened. So I was staying with Chris, but he doesn't live there now and Jal was pregnant, but I don't think anyone was supposed to know that." 

He realizes he's just been staring at her, and makes himself take a bite of his steak. "I won't bring it up," as though anyone is going to care about some girl across the ocean who's never even appeared on Gossip Girl being pregnant.

"Good, I didn't think that you would." She stops cutting and looks up at the ceiling just a little. Like she's thinking. "It probably doesn't matter. I don't think she's pregnant any more." 

"So, Cassie, what are you doing here if everyone else is back home?"

"I'm just going a little mental, I guess." She pushes the filleted plate of chicken away from her. "And not everyone is back there anyway."

\---

His mother's still in the Hamptons, so he figures it's pretty safe to bring Cassie by the townhouse. As soon as they get inside though, he has no idea what he was thinking. They finished the last of the pot while looking at Ellis Island and she's not into him in the way he wants her to be. 

This entire scenario has started to suck. 

Cassie touches a whole bunch of his mom's crystal animals that are displayed on a shelf in the living room. "I like the reindeer," she tells him. 

"Yeah, he's awesome," Nate says, feeling genuinely nervous for the first time with her all day. The kind of nervous he used to feel around Blair because he knew he wanted her, but everything was already way too fucked up to work. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he asks her, "Are you hungry?" because it seems like something to say. 

"We just ate." She giggles. "You think about food a lot." 

"You don't?" 

"All the time," but she says it like she knows something he doesn't. 

"So, are you? Hungry that is?" 

Touching her index finger to each of the statues' heads, she says, "I would love some cotton candy. The rainbow kind." 

He wishes that he could open the pantry and just find a bag of the stuff sitting in there because maybe it would change everything. "I don't have any." 

"That's okay then. I didn't think you would." Cassie starts to move the figurines so they're all looking at the couch. When they're arranged, she stands back to study her work, and smiles. "Much better." 

He wonders if she's going to want to sit down now, and have the whole zoo stare at them. Why he isn't more uncomfortable with how weird that actually is. 

The grandfather clock strikes, ten clangs echoing down the hallway. "Is it really that late already?" she asks. 

Nate checks his watch. "More or less." 

Still looking at the Swarovski collection, she says, "I should go." 

He really wants her to stay, but still doesn't know what they would do if they're not going to get high or at least make out a little. So he says, "Let me get you a car." 

"I don't know my address, I just know how to get there." It's insane, but in terms of Cassie, it actually makes sense.

"Well, can I get your phone number?" 

"I don't have a mobile." 

His nervousness ramps up to become a knot in his stomach. "Then how am I going to see you again? Take you to the museum?" 

"You will." She pauses. "If you're meant to." 

This is so utterly ridiculous. "Is that how you think you and Sid are going to reconnect?" 

"Absolutely." 

He almost says, what if he's not looking for you, but it seems too cruel to do to a girl that's probably given names to at least two of those figurines. "Well, what if he can't find you?" 

"He will." She walks over and kisses him so softly on his lips. "It was nice meeting you, Nate." 

"It was nice meeting you too, Cassie." He watches her walk out the door, her giant yellow bag almost weighing down her left shoulder, and really feels like he should have said good-bye.

\---

The next morning, before class, he looks over at the shelf in the living room. The animals are all still studying the sofa. 

By the time he comes back from the Hamptons in August though, the entire glass menagerie has been sold off, including the reindeer. He thinks he was supposed to write a paper about some play with a name like that too, but he got a C minus in English without completing it, so whatever.

\---

Nate maybe sees Cassie one afternoon while he's heading home from the gallery. The girl has on a black knit hat and is eating a muffin, her blond hair obscuring most of her face. The hat and the muffin are out of place, but _that hair._

He almost waves as his cab drives past but she turns her head and wouldn't have seen him anyway.

Nate goes back by the block a few other times over the next few weeks, not in a stalkery way, although if Chuck knew, he'd be thrilled, but just to see if maybe he can catch sight of her again. 

He never does, and eventually just files it away with all the other stuff from last year that he doesn't want to think about.


End file.
